Property Rights at Risk

BACKGROUND TO THE WILDLANDS PROJECT

Posted on September 18, 2014 Written by Dr. Michael Coffman, Sovereignty International

Rural landown­ers who desire to use their own prop­erty are shocked when they learn new reg­u­la­tions increas­ingly restrict them from doing almost any­thing. These reg­u­la­tions osten­si­bly pro­tect endan­gered species, view­sheds, open space, or a host of other rea­sons for lim­it­ing the own­ers rights to use their land. Although the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety allegedly ben­e­fit from the reg­u­la­tions, it is the landowner who pays the price through low­ered prop­erty val­ues. Rarely does the prop­erty owner receive just com­pen­sa­tion for the soci­etal benefit―as required by the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and almost every state con­sti­tu­tion. Rather the prop­erty owner is required to pay the entire cost, even though all of soci­ety sup­pos­edly benefits.

Essen­tial Back­ground Read­ing
Why Prop­erty Rights Mat­ter
The Prob­lem With The Endan­gered Species Act
Inter­na­tional Dom­i­na­tion of US Envi­ron­men­tal Law and Pri­vate Prop­erty
The Wild­lands Project

These reg­u­la­tions are usu­ally devel­oped by plan­ners or other pro­fes­sion­als who have no real-life expe­ri­ence in rural liv­ing. Because they have no real under­stand­ing of what is required to develop exploit nat­ural resources, they estab­lish ide­al­is­tic arbi­trary and capri­cious rules that make farm­ing, ranch­ing and tim­ber grow­ing increas­ingly dif­fi­cult and less prof­itable. When some resource users find they can no longer farm, ranch or pro­duce tim­ber prof­itably they are forced to sell their prop­erty at a greatly reduced value because the same reg­u­la­tions devalue the land. Those who own prop­erty near an urban area face an added bur­den when their ad val­orem taxes sky­rocket due to the grow­ing poten­tial for devel­op­ment. Yet, when they try to sell their land for devel­op­ment they find their prop­erty value has plum­meted because reg­u­la­tions requir­ing open space and other soci­etal ben­e­fits severely limit the abil­ity to develop the land and there­fore its value.

Prop­erty own­ers in Amer­ica have always accepted the need for reg­u­la­tions. Com­mon law since the time of the Magna Charta has always allowed the gov­ern­ment to restrict prop­erty use that would oth­er­wise cause prob­lems of safety, health, harm or nui­sance to the com­mu­nity or the prop­erty owner’s neigh­bors. How­ever, the impo­si­tion of reg­u­la­tions to pro­vide vague ben­e­fits to soci­ety or the envi­ron­ment is rel­a­tively new in Amer­ica. This new process is called sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. With sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, no longer do prop­erty own­ers in the United States have unalien­able prop­erty rights, as penned in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and pro­tected in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Instead, gov­ern­ment imposes on prop­erty own­ers what are termed “usufruc­tory rights.” Since unalien­able prop­erty rights pro­vide the foun­da­tion to lib­erty and wealth in Amer­ica, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment por­tends dire con­se­quences to all Americans.

By def­i­n­i­tion, usufruc­tory rights are the rights to use and enjoy the prof­its and advan­tages of some­thing belong­ing to another, as long as the prop­erty is not dam­aged or altered in any way. Con­cep­tu­ally, it is sim­i­lar to rent­ing or leas­ing some­thing within lim­its set by its true owner. The usufruct sys­tem of prop­erty use is derived from the Latin word usus­fruc­tus. Orig­i­nally it defined Roman prop­erty inter­ests between a mas­ter and his slave held under a usus fruc­tus (Latin: “use and enjoy­ment”) bond. The Romans expanded this con­cept to cre­ate an estate of uses in land rather than an estate of pos­ses­sion. Hav­ing seized lands belong­ing to con­quered king­doms, the Romans con­sid­ered them pub­lic lands, and rented (usus­fruc­tus) them to Roman sol­diers. Thus the emperor retained the estate (pos­ses­sion) in the lands, but gave the occu­pier an estate of uses.

The grow­ing moun­tain of envi­ron­men­tal and other reg­u­la­tions that sup­pos­edly ben­e­fits the pub­lic good in the United States today has stripped Amer­i­cans of the unalien­able right to pos­sess land. Instead, Amer­i­cans increas­ingly have only the usufruct right to use the land and pay taxes (rent). As with the Romans, the gov­ern­ment retains the right to deter­mine how the land is used.

The Link Between Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and The Wild­lands Project

The usufruct prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment first became pub­lic at the 1976 United Nations Con­fer­ence on Human Set­tle­ments (Habi­tat I) held in Van­cou­ver. For instance, the Pre­am­ble of Agenda Item 10 of the Con­fer­ence Report states that:

Land…can­not be treated as an ordi­nary asset, con­trolled by indi­vid­u­als and sub­ject to the pres­sures and inef­fi­cien­cies of the mar­ket. Pri­vate land own­er­ship is also a prin­ci­pal instru­ment of accu­mu­la­tion and con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and there­fore con­tributes to social injus­tice; if unchecked, it may become a major obsta­cle in the plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion of devel­op­ment schemes. The pro­vi­sion of decent dwellings and healthy con­di­tions for the peo­ple can only be achieved if land is used in the inter­ests of soci­ety as a whole. Pub­lic con­trol of land use is there­fore indis­pens­able.…” (Ital­ics added)

Through­out this UN doc­u­ment the social­ist model for pri­vate prop­erty rights are set forth as the basis for future United Nations policy:

Pub­lic own­er­ship or effec­tive con­trol of land in the pub­lic inter­est is the sin­gle most impor­tant means of…achieving a more equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of the ben­e­fits of devel­op­ment…. Gov­ern­ments must main­tain full juris­dic­tion and exer­cise com­plete sov­er­eignty over such land…. Change in the use of land…should be sub­ject to pub­lic con­trol and regulation…of the com­mon good. (Ital­ics added)

State con­trol over pri­vate prop­erty has been cen­tral to every inter­na­tional treaty since the 1970s. The United Nations’ World Com­mis­sion on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment for­mal­ized this into inter­na­tional pol­icy when it pub­lished its report Our Com­mon Future in 1987. This land­mark report helped trig­ger a wide range of actions, includ­ing the UN “Earth Sum­mits” in 1992 and 2002, the Inter­na­tional Cli­mate Change Con­ven­tion, The Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­sity and world­wide “Agenda 21″ pro­grams. Agenda 21 is a 40 chap­ter mas­ter plan to reor­ga­nize national laws to the social­ist prin­ci­ples of cen­tral con­trol. The United States signed Agenda 21 dur­ing the 1992 Earth Sum­mit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Chap­ter 15.3 requires “urgent and deci­sive action” be taken “to con­serve and main­tain genes, species and ecosys­tems, with a view to the sus­tain­able man­age­ment and use of bio­log­i­cal resources.” To do this chap­ter 15.4 requires that “Governments…should:

(a) Press for the early entry into force of the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­sity, with the widest pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion; and
(b) Develop national strate­gies for the con­ser­va­tion of bio­log­i­cal diver­sity and the sus­tain­able use of bio­log­i­cal resources.

Chap­ter 15.5 of Agenda 21 con­tin­ues by stat­ing that “con­ser­va­tion of ecosys­tems and nat­ural habitats…should include the rein­force­ment of ter­res­trial… pro­tected area systems…and promot[ion of] envi­ron­men­tally sound and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in areas adja­cent to pro­tected areas with a view to fur­ther­ing pro­tec­tion of these areas.” The United Nations and its inter­na­tional allies designed the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­sity to be the work­horse in ful­fill­ing these require­ments. The treaty was merely a 18 page out­line of what needed to be done. Sen­a­tor Jesse Helms (R-NC) cor­rectly called it “a pre­am­ble falsely described as a treaty.” The imple­ment­ing lan­guage was to be added after enough nations rat­i­fied it to put it into force. Even so, Arti­cle 8 of the treaty uses almost iden­ti­cal lan­guage used in Agenda 21:

(a) Pro­mote a sys­tem of pro­tected areas or areas where spe­cial mea­sures need to be taken to con­serve bio­log­i­cal diver­sity;
(e) Pro­mote envi­ron­men­tally sound and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in areas adja­cent to pro­tected areas with a view to fur­ther­ing pro­tec­tion of these areas.”

By August of 1993 the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion accepted Agenda 21’s chal­lenge when it directed “nat­ural resource and envi­ron­men­tal agencies…develop a joint strat­egy to help the United States ful­fill its exist­ing inter­na­tional oblig­a­tions (e.g. Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­sity, Agenda 21)…the exec­u­tive branch should direct fed­eral agen­cies to eval­u­ate national policies…in light of inter­na­tional poli­cies and oblig­a­tions, and to amend national poli­cies to achieve inter­na­tional objec­tives.” This effort became the pri­mary rea­son for the need for vice pres­i­dent Gore and pres­i­dent Clin­ton to rein­vent gov­ern­ment.

To accom­plish this, pres­i­dent Clin­ton also cre­ated the President’s Coun­cil on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment. The coun­cil was com­prised of green-oriented indus­trial lead­ers, nat­ural resource cab­i­net heads and lead­ers of major envi­ron­men­tal groups. The coun­cil pro­duced a host of social­ist guide­lines to imple­ment Agenda 21 in a series of doc­u­ments under the ban­ner of Sus­tain­able Amer­ica from 1996 to 1999. These became the offi­cial poli­cies of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and were heav­ily pro­moted by envi­ron­men­tal non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions (NGOs) and foun­da­tions. All are cen­tered on the usufruct con­cept of property.

The United Nations intended that the imple­ment­ing lan­guage for the Bio­di­ver­sity Treaty be taken from the Global Bio­di­ver­sity Assess­ment (GBA), a 1040 page tome that osten­si­bly sci­en­tif­i­cally defined the rea­son and the method­ol­ogy for pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­sity. The GBA estab­lishes the need for the usufruct concept,

Source: http://agenda21news.com/2014/09/background-wildlands-project/#more-2747